


muscle memory

by minormendings



Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: Angst, Dumb boys who don’t know how to talk about their feelings, M/M, Monsters who won’t stop touching Quentin like seriously leave my boy alone, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-22
Updated: 2019-03-22
Packaged: 2019-11-27 20:22:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,649
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18198884
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/minormendings/pseuds/minormendings
Summary: Eliot’s body had always been tactile. But, thought Quentin grimly, he had liked this particular quirk better when Eliot’s body actually had Eliot driving it.Or: a story of the Monster getting all up in Quentin’s personal space, the memories that evokes, and the ambiguities of “proof of concept”





	muscle memory

Eliot’s body had always been tactile. But, thought Quentin grimly, he had liked this particular quirk better when Eliot’s body actually had Eliot driving it. 

He didn’t understand it. The Monster would enter a room and make a beeline for him in a way that it didn’t do with anyone else. If Quentin was lucky, it would just ruffle his hair in a way that reminded him achingly of how Eliot used to do it. If he was unlucky, it would drape its legs all over him, straddle him, sling an arm around his neck, sit on his lap. 

Quentin had been awake for twenty-six hours now, alternately doing research and trying to placate the Monster in its bouts of petulant neediness. Quentin sat hunched over a laptop on the couch, his vision swimming, and he was just about to call it when—

“Quentin.”

The thing blinked into being on the arm of the couch and loomed like an ill omen. 

“Quentin. Am I doing it wrong?”

Quentin breathed out. He was never going to get used to this, get used to how half of his brain sang _Eliot_ at the Monster’s appearance and the other half screamed _wrong. wrong. wrong_. “Doing what wrong?”

“This body takes too much effort. I’m sick of having to put food in it and pee all the time. But if I don’t do that it’ll fall out from under me. Is that right?” Quentin could feel the Monster turning to face him, but he couldn’t bring himself to meet its eyes. 

He fixed his gaze on the floor instead. “Yeah, that’s right. That’s just how bodies work.”

“Oh. I thought I was doing it wrong.” The Monster considered. “You’re all so...fragile.” It brought its hand up to Quentin’s cheek. He flinched but didn’t pull away _—keep it happy, keep it happy_ —and a jolt of electricity ran down his spine as it cupped his face, sweeping a thumb over his cheekbone to his ear. 

_Fuck_ he missed this. Missed when it was real. Against his will, Quentin leaned into the touch and closed his eyes. He shut off the part of his brain that screamed at the Monster’s touch and let himself think _Eliot’s hand. Eliot’s body_. Sense memories flashed through him like lightning bolts: Eliot ruffling his hair as he handed him a drink back in the Physical Kids’ cottage, a million years ago. Eliot putting his head in Quentin’s lap, mock flirtatiously at first and then just to lay there and talk and be near him. And a few bright spots in his memory, almost too achingly, complicatedly wonderful to think about: the few times Quentin had kissed him and Eliot did just this: a hand on the back of Quentin’s neck, stroking Quentin’s face with his thumb just like he was doing...just like he was doing now— _no_. 

Quentin jerked back, horrified. Ice dropped into his stomach as his brain screamed again: _Wrong! Wrong!_

He gathered himself. “We are fragile,” he said, fighting to keep his voice even. “But you remember our deal. Take care of h—of the body. Please.”

 

Eyes closed, Quentin drifted between dream and memory. 

He knew, intellectually, that the body bracketing his on the couch wasn’t Eliot’s in any sense that mattered, but half asleep like this, he didn’t have to think about it. He just breathed in the familiar scent, and clutched an arm to him, and thought _Eliot, Eliot_ , and the voice in his head that said _wrong. wrong_. was too quiet to hear. 

In his dream he was back at the Mosaic, lying in bed after a long day of work, bracketed by this same body. He’d stopped asking why Eliot would hold him like this but wouldn’t let him _overthink it_ a long time ago, around year four, and on days like this it didn’t matter that there was a line between them marked “thus far shalt you pass but no further.” Quentin didn’t have to overthink it, he didn’t have to define it as anything— _friends, friends who are raising a child together, friends who have had sex more than once but less than either of us would really want, friends who don’t look at what’s between us too closely lest we scare it away like a small, easily-startled creature_. There wasn’t a word you could put to this relationship other than just _QuentinandEliot,_ but right now it didn’t matter. 

Quentin remembered how this memory went. He would say, “Do you ever think about—“ and then launch into a big rambly explanation of his thoughts the past few days, until Eliot laughed softly and said “God, I forgot you were a philosophy major, I bet you were insufferable as an undergrad.” But with infinite fondness. 

And Quentin would try to brush past this infinite fondness—they were getting a little too close to the “thus far shalt you pass but no further,” right now, and Quentin would say, “I know, but I’ve been meaning to get back into it a little. But it’s a little hard to think about moral particularism when Jonathan Dancy won’t even be born for another twenty years on a whole ‘nother world.”

And Eliot would say, “Moral particularism? Way to kill the mood, Coldwater,” and then leap over the line of _but no further_ between them—just this once, just this twice, just this twentieth time—and press a kiss to the back of Quentin’s neck. 

 

Quentin woke up to Julia gently tugging his laptop out from under his arm and draping a blanket over him where he still lay on the couch. “What time is it?” he asked, blearily. God, his head hurt. 

“Go back to sleep, Q,” she said softly. 

“No, if I’ve slept enough I have to go—wait, when was the last time anyone saw it? How long has the Monster been gone?” Panic fluttered in his stomach, but dimly, drowned in exhaustion. 

“Shh, no, it’s okay. It just left, and you’ve barely been asleep for two hours,” Julia reassured him. She paused. “When I got back it was...it was practically spooning you, Q.”

He shuddered violently, drawn out of the fantasy that he’d been back at the Mosaic. Why couldn’t that thing leave him _alone?_

“I don’t know why it keeps touching you,” she said, dropping down to perch hesitantly on the edge of the couch. When Quentin didn’t protest, she tucked her legs up on the couch and lay down next to him, letting him wrap an arm around her. He breathed in the smell of her, Julia, a real person in her own body, and held her tighter. 

She continued after a moment. “I can’t decide if it keeps getting close to you because it likes you or because it likes that it can get a rise out of you.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean I can feel your emotions about as well as it can, and every time it touches you you feel...thrilled. But in a way that’s complicated. Painful.”

“Sounds about right,” said Quentin thickly. _Thrilled. Complicated. Painful_. He should be mad that Julia was poking around in his head like this, but he just felt relieved. It was _Julia_ , and now with her godhood there could be no secrets between them. Just how it used to be. 

“Q.” She rolled over in his arms to look him in the eye. “You know you can talk about it, if you want. What is it that’s there between you and Eliot?”

“I don’t know,” he said honestly. He swallowed but didn’t break her gaze. “I mean, I know—I know I love him. God, I think I’m _in_ love with him. But except for when he broke through from the Monster for that one minute, he’s only ever pushed me away.”

“What was it he said to you when he broke through from the Monster?”

What _had_ it been? Quentin wondered. _Proof of concept. ._ It had sounded suspiciously like a declaration of love, but it could just as easily have been merely a code, a phrase Eliot knew the Monster itself would never say. He couldn’t let himself hope too hard. And he couldn’t possibly explain it to Julia, but he did want her to know. 

“Just . . .” He tapped his fingers to his temple, Professor X-style, giving her permission to get back in his head. “Just look.”

She laughed weakly. “Q, I’m not an X-Man, I don’t have to...yeah, okay, I’ll look.” She closed her eyes and he let himself remember. 

He remembered everything. Leaning into every touch at Brakebills. Climbing into Eliot’s lap to kiss him desperately, forgetting for a moment that Margo was even there. And of course, the Mosaic. Letting himself look at Eliot when Eliot wasn’t watching, when he was bathed in the light from the Fillorian sun and bent to his work. That first, soft kiss, when he felt like his stomach was tied in a knot until Eliot kissed him back and everything that was wound tight in his insides came undone. The knot in his stomach returning the next day, when Eliot had said to _save your overthinking for the puzzle_. Living together for years, forcing himself to think about the few times they’d fallen into bed together as just an extension of their friendship. Not letting himself _overthink_ it, not letting himself overthink the way he caught Eliot looking at him with an infinitely soft expression or how good it felt to lay his head on Eliot’s chest after a long day. _He doesn’t want you like that_. And later: _That’s not me. Not when we have a choice._

What did _proof of concept_ mean, after all that? Fuck if he knew. 

“Oh, Q,” said Julia softly, after a long moment. She pulled him closer. “It’s okay. It’s okay. We’ll get him back.”

**Author's Note:**

> this was painful to write so I think my next project is going to have to be a post-Monster reunion scene. stay tuned, and come find me on tumblr eternally yelling about these books in the meantime at glorious-twentyfifth.tumblr.com
> 
> Also: The writers seem to think that nothing happened between Q and Eliot after the one kiss in the mosaic timeline, and Hale, Jason, and the fandom seem to think they were basically married, but I tend to fall somewhere in the middle—I don’t think even Eliot “I’m afraid I’m unloveable” Waugh would turn Q down back in timeline 40 after fifty years of being basically married, so this is my take on what happened. Hope you enjoyed, and hope we get these good dumb boys back together soon!


End file.
